Just Grab Onto Something And Pull
by aerstes
Summary: Little Mini Episode I thought up between 10th Doctor and Rose, not sure of the ending yet. Deals with the Doctor reading Rose's thoughts. Fun ending in store. *wink*
1. Chapter 1

"Are you sure about this, Doctor?"

"Absolutely not. But what the hell. We may as well try. What have we got to lose?"

"I'm scared."

"You've waited for this long enough, Rose."

"But I'm not sure I know how everything works. I could…break something."

"It's not as fragile as you think Rose. Just…grab on to something and pull."

"Can't you just do it yourself? Wouldn't that be easier?"

"Well, obviously, but where's the fun in that? Come on. Where's your sense of adventure?"

"Okay…ready?"

The Doctor grinned at her eagerly. With a deep breath, she reached out and pulled a lever on the console of the Tardis. She groaned and lurched forward as the new driver handled her. Instantly Rose was catapulted onto the ground.

"What on Earth did you do that for?" the Doctor hollered, struggling to drag himself up to the console.

"You said just grab on to something and pull!"

"Well I didn't think you were going to pull _that_! That's the worst possible thing you could have pulled!"

The Tardis lurched in the opposite direction just as he was about to reach what she assumed were the brakes, and they nearly flew to the other side of the control room.

"Can't you just label these things so I know what I'm doing?" Rose squealed as she anchored herself to the chair with one arm and slowly inched her way towards the doctor as the Tardis whined and shook, making some of the most terrible noises she had ever heard. She was probably going to get her room relocated for this. She made an apology to the old gal in her head.

"Why would I label the console? Where's the fun in that? Then just anyone could fly her!"

The Doctor heaved himself up to the console, finally, bopped a thingiemajig, and the Tardis' shaking reduced only slightly.

"Well what did I do?"

"Nothing. Everything's fine. Well, we may be hurtling towards a supernova. But it's fine. Just twist that thing there."

"What, this?"

"Gods, no! Are you trying to kill us? The one next to it, Rose! Next to it!"

"What made you think this was a good idea?" she yelled, hesitantly grabbing onto what she could only describe as an Easter egg and twisting it.

The Tardis shuddered, and finally calmed, settling onto some foreign ground with a gentle thud.

"So, where are we?"

"No idea," the Doctor said, letting his lower lip jut out as he powered down the console, stroking it like a concerned lover, no doubt whispering how he is sorry for Rose's terrible behavior.

"You serious?"

"Rose, the universe is huge. Even with 900 years to explore I can't be expected to know exactly where we are at the drop of a hat! It could be somewhere completely new! Only one way to find out."

Rose smiled, happy he was choosing not to brood over her nearly breaking the Tardis. It was his fault, he talked her into it. Still, she couldn't dwell on it, the idea of exploring a place even the Doctor wasn't familiar with was thrilling. Most times she just followed him around hoping to keep up as he spouted information at her. Now she could see what it looks like for the doctor to discover a new planet, maybe even a new species! She practically raced him to the door, eager to see what waited on the other side.

"Come on, slow poke! Let's go!" she called out to him.

Rose was flashing that adorable smile that the Doctor simply loved. Her head tilted to the side, tongue poking out of her big grin devilishly, eyes glistening with excitement. This was the part of his travelling he loved the most. Not the places and the adventure, but watching it all get experienced through fresh, young eyes. Without that wondrous look in his companion's eye he was sure he would forget what it was like to be in awe of all the wonders the universe had to offer, and he'd only see it through the eyes of a tired old war survivor. He gladly sprinted after her, and swung open the big blue doors.

They both instinctively lifted their hands, shielding their eyes from the burning light. An impossibly bright sun? No. More like…spotlights. Shining down on Rose and the Doctor.

This probably wasn't good.

A voice suddenly boomed around in their brains. It wasn't just hearing a voice from a speaker or something. The voice was in the Doctor and Rose's _heads_. They both cringed at how loud it bellowed.

"THE INTRUDERS WILL TURN OVER THEIR WEAPONS" it screamed at them.

"What?" The Doctor exclaimed. "We don't have any weapons!"

"We come in peace!" Rose called in vain, getting a look from the Doctor that mockingly lightly judged her stereotypical response.

"THE INTRUDERS WHO DO NOT COMPLY WILL HAVE THEIR WEAPONS FORCIBLY REMOVED."

Rose's eyes began to adjust to the light. They were in some sort of industrial building that looked bigger than a football field. All around them were big bins of stuff; metal scraps, bits of foreign electronic parts, gears, machinery. About ten feet away from them way a big conveyer belt it was all being brought in on. And off to the right was…guns.

Rose had been on enough hostile planets and ships to know a gun when she saw one regardless of how foreign or high tech it was. And there were loads of them. She looked over to the Doctor worriedly, who had, of course, come to this same conclusion likely within seconds after they stepped out of the Tardis. He had probably figured out the entire situation already; where they were, who the natives were, why they were so angry. She wondered if 900 years of time travelling would have the same effect on her or if she was just thick.

"Doctor," she whispered nervously. His fingers instantly entwined with her own, squeezing just a tad to reassure her.

"The intruders don't have any weapons!" he insisted, "Honestly! We're here by mistake!"

"Yes, erm, so if you don't mind," Rose barely more than whispered, "We'll just go the way we came and go our separate ways, yeah?"

"THE INTRUDERS WILL NOT STRUGGLE."

Just as she was about to ask what that meant, Rose felt herself being ripped away from her tall, gangly companion.

"Doctor!" she called out helplessly, but he was undergoing the same treatment.

The thing holding onto her was more orange than a carrot. There were two of them, each was easily twice her height. How they had managed to sneak up on her and the Doctor was incomprehensible. They were bulky and heavily armored like what Rose could only describe as alien-y knight. Large, emerald eyes looked down at her coldly.

She looked over and saw the other alien ripping the sonic screwdriver from the pocket of a clearly irritated Doctor.

Creepishly slender, leathery orange fingers locked her hands behind her back and shoved her forward.

"Rose!" he called out to her as he was dragged in the opposite direction. "It'll be alright. Just stay calm. Everything will be fine."

"No! Doctor!" she screamed. "Look!" she snapped at the alien, squirming and kicking and trying to weasel out of his grip. "I don't care what it is you think we've done or what you plan to do to but don't you dare try and separate us!"

The alien, grunting with frustration, lifted her off her feet like she was a toy and pinned her arms to her sides as he carried her away. Helpless, she was carried to a large, rusty doorway on the opposite side of the conveyer belt. As the door slammed shut behind them the loud mechanical noises of the room were silenced all at once. She now was staring down a significantly dark, dank hallway that seemed to stretch on endlessly. The scent of rusted metal and dampness filled her nose, and she reduced her squirming, realizing that she wasn't going to easily overpower the alien in her currently imprisoned state.

Alright , Rose, think. The Doctor said it would be alright. So either he had things completely under control…or things were totally out of control. She wasn't going to leave it up to chance. She had to find her own way out of here on the chance that the Doctor wouldn't be able to get to her. True, nine times out of ten he pulled through, but she knew he was without his sonic screwdriver, and that was a problem.

She stopped squirming and let herself be guided down the hallway. The creature stopped at another set of doors and tapped away at a keypad on the wall next to it. There was a whirring sound, then a loud click, and the doors groaned open. She was shoved in, and the doors quickly shut behind her, leaving her alone in a nearly blackened room about twenty feet in diameter.

"So that's it then, yeah?" she called to the alien now across the doors from her. "No questioning or torture? Nothing? Where's the fun in that?"

She heard the clunking of its metal boots grow quieter until she was left in dark silence. Perfect.

No keypad on the other side for her to replicate the entrance code in. What was the point of paying attention to memorizing it now? This must be a containment cell, then. No windows, no other entrances. Just the door, with pretty much no way of opening it on this side with anything short of a crowbar. And…a vent shaft. Yes! Except the ceiling was about five feet above her reach. It was built for these tall beings, after all. With the only object in the room of use being a bench bolted to the wall, on the opposite side of the room the vent was on, it wasn't of much use to her.

Brilliant. She slumped down onto the bench, thinking. What was she going to do now?

Within seconds of having that thought, she was suddenly paralyzed. Her limbs locked, unwilling to move, she couldn't even blink. The bench she was sitting on began humming with electricity, glowing blue, coursing electricity through her body. She wanted to scream, wanted to run, but there was nothing she could do. She felt something familiar in her mind. She'd felt it once or twice before. Something was poking around in her head using the pulsations of energy like probing fingers into her thoughts, sort of like the doctor did when he needed to find something or calm her down, but this was different, this was more invasive. She focused past the pain, past the electric pulses, and focused her thoughts.

_I won't tell you anything until I can see the man I came with. You hear me? I want to see my friend. Until then you get nothing._

She felt the pressure of the mind search grow stronger, felt the electricity heighten to a detrimental frequency. She cried out. They wanted her to be scared, scared enough to let the barriers she had put up in her mind down. But she wouldn't give up.

_I WANT TO SEE MY FRIEND. WHERE IS MY FRIEND? WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH HIM?_

The electricity strengthened still for another moment, forcing a scream from Rose's lips, and then it all stopped.

She leapt off the bench, cursing under her breath, her whole body trembling with exhaustion from being electrocuted at who knows what frequency. She shakily collapsed on the cold floor, eyelids suddenly heavy. She curled up on the ground and let herself sink into sleep. She wanted more than anything else to be safe, to have her precious Doctor back. She had hoped that for once, maybe, they could go somewhere magical where everything would go right, for once. But no. She couldn't change the circumstances.

Just as her mind slipped inward into itself and her eyes fluttered shut, the door groaned open. She nearly leapt into the air as she crawled away into a corner. A figure was tossed in, and the doors were once again shut before she could even think to race through them.

"Rose?" a familiar voice called out meekly.

"Doctor!" she exclaimed, rising to greet him. Her legs were wobbly beneath her. He had to dive to catch her to avoid letting her collapse onto the ground.

"Rose what's happened?" he asked, nervous concern in his voice and on his face.

"Oh, n-nothing much," she croaked, hoping to sound more assertive than she did. "Ya know, the usual."

He sat on the ground, drawing her up into his lap and resting a gentle hand on her face, his eyes glancing up a moment at the bench.

"I guess I'm not the only one who received a warm welcome from our gracious host, hmm? Oh Rose, I'm so sorry."

"It's not your fault, Doctor. I just had to go and grab something and pull. I brought us here."

"No, it's my job to protect you, and I'm failing at it. Just relax. Let me take care of you."

Rose rested her head against the Doctor's chest, listening to the calming rhythm of his two hearts. It didn't matter to her that they hurt her, she was more angry that they had hurt _her_ Doctor. She wrapped an arm around his neck, pulling him close.

"It's a two way street, you know," she whispered. "Are you okay?"

"I'm always okay!" he exclaimed. What a lie that was, but Rose let herself move on rather than press the matter.

"What is that thing?" she asked.

"Oh, just your basic neuro-electric stimulator. A pretty archaic form of mind reading. Not very precise, easy to overcome if you know what you're doing. I was able to shut them out, naturally, two hearts and all. Not as susceptible to electric shock. But I'm sure they got to you. And I'm sorry for that. I'm sorry they did that. But if they got into your head, maybe they'll see that we're not a threat."

"They didn't, though!" she exclaimed, feeling a good bit proud of herself. "I blocked them out, told them I wouldn't tell them anything 'til they let me see you!"

His eyes suddenly darkened with serious concern.

"How did you do that?" he asked.

"Well its nothing I haven't…" she cut herself before saying 'done before'. She was about to accidentally tell the doctor that she was, in fact, used to blocking out certain parts of her thoughts that she didn't want him to see whenever he prodded around in there.

"Rose," he whispered, backing away from her a bit. "What aren't you telling me?"

She released her arm from him, bringing her knees up to her chin.

"Nothing," she muttered into her tattered jeans, "What, you can't be the only one with secrets?

He looked at her, a slight frown on his lips, silent.

"Yeah, alright," she admitted, "I don't let you see everything. I have a little practice at putting up mind blocks. I've never held anything back from you that was important, though. Just…little things. You know."

_Things about you_, she thought to herself.

"Rose, how could you…" he began.

"What?" she demanded, frustration and embarrassment flushing her cheeks, "It's not very fair, is it? You can't just get cross with me for letting myself have a lick of privacy in my life when you never tell me _anything_. And I never ask you about it, either. I respect your privacy. I know there are things that hurt you too much to talk about. Because that's just it, Doctor, I know you. I don't need to know every single detail about your life to say that I _know_ you. I trust you, completely, even if I know you'll never tell me the whole truth. Can't you grant me the same courtesy?"

She tucked her face behind her knees, hiding her face from him, wishing she had just kept her mouth shut.

He stared at her a moment with, his face blank. He knew he couldn't lecture her, really, because he knew she was right. He could never let Rose in like he wished for her to let him in.

He did feel hurt, really, that she felt she had to hide things from him. But try as he may he couldn't hold back the giddy excitement he felt. There was something to Rose he didn't know. What could she possibly feel the need to hide from him? Suddenly there were two mysteries going on at once: One, who the aliens were and what how they could escape them and two, how was he going to get Rose to tell him her secret? And if he played his cards right, he could possibly figure both things out at the same time. He rather liked the challenge.

"It's alright," he sighed loudly, letting her think he was moving on from the subject. "So!" he then exclaimed, leaping off his feet, "We're locked in a cell with a big old neuro-electric bench. What else do we know?"

Rose lifted her head, wondering if she really got off the hook on this one.

"Uh," she mumbled, "Well, there's big orange aliens, in what seems to be some sort of…metal processing plant? No, wait. That's wrong. Could it be a…sort of weapons factory? Making guns and such out of old parts?"

"Very good! So, why the containment cells? And why the touchy security?"

He was pacing around her, like he did when he was problem solving. And she couldn't help but get up and follow suit, despite still being a little weak on her feet. Because he probably already had the whole problem solved in his head. But that wasn't the fun part for him, as Rose had noticed. The fun was in getting her to catch up to him and come to conclusions herself. He loved seeing things through the less seasoned eyes of somebody else.

"Right," she answered, thinking, "I mean, they're building with used parts and scrap…so why be so protective of it? Unless they have no option except to use old parts…because they're more worried about quantity than quality."

"And why would that be the case?" he asked her, eyes glistening with excitement.

"Because they're involved in some sort of…warfare?" she asked, trying to sound like she was stating it rather than asking it but she couldn't help but raise her voice at the end.

"Exactly!" he declared, "So, this species, a relatively new one by the looks of things, with technology just barely more advanced than some of the stuff you'd see on your own Earth, gets locked into a war with…someone, and are clearly aren't doing as well as they'd like because they're scraping up scraps from the bottom of the barrel to arm their troops. They're scared, intimidated, probably up against an enemy with superior technology to theirs…"

"And a blue box just appears in the middle of their weapons facility out of nowhere," she finished for him. "No wonder they were on high alert about it. So you don't know what species they are, then?"

He looked almost ashamed of himself.

"Well, no. But! Judging by their appearance I can get a close idea of where we are."

"How's that, Doctor?"

"Well, you saw their skin, yes?"

"Yeah, it looks like they've all spent a bit too much time in their tanning beds."

He grinned.

"Yes, so! They clearly are relatively close to a sun that gives off a lot of ultraviolet radiation and have an atmosphere rich in oxygen but doesn't quite block out the harmful rays. Hence the lack of windows, if you hadn't noticed. That, plus the lack of strong gravitational pull which explains the height, plus the speed and direction we're spinning in…"

"You can tell how fast the planet is spinning?"

"Moon, actually, we're on a moon. And yes, Rose, of course I can. Just because I haven't got my sonic screwdriver doesn't mean I'm completely useless. Anyway, moons often don't produce their own heat to naturally be liveable, that comes from the gravitational pull of the planet its being towed by actually expanding and contracting the whole mass of the moon, causing friction heat in the moon's core, which explains that little bit of rumbling under our feet."

Rose looked at him blankly.

"No? Didn't feel it? Well, anyway, that means it's a pretty big planet surrounding a violet moon somewhere in..." he ran a finger along the nearest wall of the room and stuck it in his mouth, grimacing at the flavor. "The Valrac galaxy."

"Okay, no, you can't seriously know what galaxy we're in simply by licking a wall."

"You don't think so? I very well could, I'll have you know, and the fact that the Tardis gave me some rough coordinates as we crashed towards here is completely beside the point, I could have figured it out on my own."

"Sure," she mocked. He looked at her sideways, ignoring her as he finished his little speech.

"Now I don't know the Valrac Galaxy well, but, the only prominent species I can think of here would be the Uuthrans, a nasty little race of conquerors, probably had their eye on this moon for a while. I'm not surprised that they've locked us up. Uuthrans are known for whipping up clever surprise attacks. Anything that comes their way must be seen as a possible threat."

"So what do we do?"

"Well, we look nothing like Uuthrans, I assure you, so, as long as we explain to these lovely folk that there's a mix up I'm sure they'll let us go."

She looked at him doubtfully.

"You really believe that?"

"Absolutely not. So! Question is, how do we get out of here?"

Rose pointed above the Doctor's head, proud that for once she had the answer before he did. Unless he was letting her think she did.

"Brilliant!" he exclaimed. "I'll just…" he stopped in the middle of reaching into his pocket, "oh, wait, no sonic. Guess we'll have to do this the hard way."

"Watcha mean?" Rose asked.

He gave her a goofy smile.


	2. Chapter 2

Within a few moments, Rose had her feet digging into the Doctors shoulders as she awkwardly tried to balance atop him.

"Would you quit moving? You're so _wobbly_!" she hissed, nearly losing her balance every time she got close to reaching the vent.

"Sorry! You're harder to hold up like this than I thought!"

"What's that supposed to mean?" Rose dug her toes into his shoulder blades a little harder, totally by accident.

"Nothing, Rose! Honestly!" he grunted. She felt a lot lighter when she wasn't stabbing her sneakers into him.

_Next time I have to climb onto the Doctor like this, it had better be for a much more _enjoyable_ reason_, Rose thought. _Ugh! Stop that thought right there!_

"Can you reach it?" the Doctor asked.

"Hmm? Oh…almost…but its bolted shut. I might be able to get the bolt off. This would be a lot easier with the sonic screwdriver. You really should have a secret compartment for it, or a backup sonic…or something" she huffed, her voice rising and falling as she teetered uneasily.

The vent was just barely in her reach. The bolt was a little loose, so she didn't have to kill her fingernails to wriggle it free. A few near falls later and the bolt fell towards the ground, bounced off something, and hit the ground with a loud 'plunk'.

"Oww! Rose, that hit my head!"

"Sorry!" she exclaimed, almost positive she saw him fix his hair for a second. Typical. "But at least I got it. But how do we get up there? I can just barely reach it, let alone scurry up."

The Doctor wavered slightly under her; he was getting tired of holding her up in this fashion. Rose got a firm grip on the vent, and tugged it open. She hadn't fully thought through that part, because next came the part where the vent panel swung down, knocked Rose on her head, and subsequently knocked them both off their balance. A few grunts and squeals later, they were both toppled painfully to the ground.

"Sorry," Rose gasped after she took a moment to collect herself. The Doctor was hunched over, coughing. Evidently he had had the wind knocked out of him. He held up a 'thumbs up' as he choked for air.

"It's alright, these things happen," he croaked. "Let's try again, shall we? Allonsy!" he proclaimed, pulling her up to her feet.

Rose leapt onto him like a baby koala, scrambling up his back to regain her position.

"Good thing I didn't wear a skirt today, eh?" she joked as she stabilized herself.

"Who says that's a good thing?" the Doctor joked. Rose forced herself not to overthink that sentence in a million different inappropriate ways. _Focus, Rose._

"Rose, listen, on the count of three, I'm going to jump. And I'm going to try and jump high enough to propel you up to the vent. Sound easy enough?"

"Not at all."

"Right…yeah. Well, here we go anyway. Ready? One…Two…THREE!"

Rose attempted to leap off the Doctor's shoulders at the same time he jumped off the ground. It was awkward, and maintaining her balance in that moment was so difficult she barely was able to focus on propelling herself toward the vent entrance. And after that, she barely remembered to hold on to something once she got close enough to get inside. Her right elbow dug painfully into the inner wall of the vent and her fingernails scratched into the metal. She managed to keep the death grip long enough to shove her other elbow into the opposite wall of the vent and started to heave herself up. She didn't have a lot of upper body strength, so it took her a moment, but somehow she miraculously dragged herself into the vent.

"What can you see?" the Doctor called up to her. She couldn't see that he had been ducking around her the whole time she scrambled up to avoid being kicked in the head.

"Uh…" she said, still panting from the shuffle up, "it's very…venty."

"Well which direction does it go?" he said, being lovingly patient with her. He had to know that they had no idea how long it would be until someone came back for them, a second, an hour, who knew. But she still let Rose be Rose.

She poked her head through the vent opening.

"It seems to go on for a while to the left, and to the right it goes on about…ten feet then turns…up? Or…north…I dunno I'm not sure where north is. Doctor where's north?"

"Rose," he sighs amusedly.

"Right, sorry. Well, my bet would be to go right, see if we can find another room hopefully has more easily opened doors than ours. So…uh…Doctor…how exactly are we going to get you up here?"

"Well…we're not."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, Rose Tyler, that I trust you. _Completely_."

She didn't like when he turned her own words around on her. She couldn't tell if he meant it or if it was some passive way of showing her that he was still upset.

"Yeah, well, you can trust me all you want once you get up here."

"Rose, I can't."

"But, Doctor, what am I supposed to do?"

"Just be your usual brilliant self. Find an entrance to another room and come and…ya know…get me out. Like I said, I trust you."

"No. Absolutely not. I'm coming back down, we'll send you up, and you can come get me."

"Rose we don't have time to go through this whole process again. Stop being ridiculous."

"But Doctor, what if they come get us while I'm away? Then you'll be stuck explaining where I've gone off to, and…"

"And it'll be far worse if I were to just leave you down here. Come on, now, Rose. Don't worry about me, I'll be fine…as long as you _hurry_."

She groaned, hating that she couldn't argue with him. She gave him a halfhearted wave, and re-shut the vent entrance behind her, and with a sigh, began to crawl.

"Oh, and Rose?" the Doctor called.

"What now?" she moaned irritatedly.

"See if you can find my sonic screwdriver," he said hopefully, like a child asking for a treat while shopping with his mum.

"What? Are you kidding? You can get another one!"

"But that's my sonic screwdriver, Rose! I like my sonic screwdriver!"

She groaned again. "Fine."

She decided to go right. She had a feeling that left would take her back to the main factory room, and that was a long fall. Right could possibly lead somewhere more manageable.

She figured that with such big aliens they may have bigger vents. Of course that was assuming that vents were made to be big enough to crawl in. It seemed like the only time she and the Doctor came across vents there purpose was to be clambered through. Normal folk just let vents carry air like they were meant to.

She told herself to hurry. A feeling was growing in her gut, a sort of instinct she had grown after travelling for as long as she had. You get a sixth sense about how much danger you're in, how long you have, how high you're likelihood to survive is. She didn't see this species as cruel, just scared. But seeing as they were likely trying to crack open the Tardis as she crawled, it wouldn't be long before they came back with questions. She had to _move_.

Rose rounded the corner and nearly stumbled over the next vent opening. It looked down on two creatures, less armored than the ones they had captured by, who were fiddling with some little piece of machinery. She thought to move on to another room, but she had a feeling that she didn't have the time.

It looked like some kind of technology lab. Lots of high tech equipment, long tables, half created and dissected tech Rose didn't recognize. The two seemed to be trying to figure out how the thing they were fiddling with worked. The two of them were wholly fixated on their work. So much so that they didn't even notice the slight squeaking sound as Rose twisted off the bolt just about their heads. She caught the bolt before it dropped onto their heads like it did the Doctor's. Slowly, she swung the door open. She suddenly heard an unmistakable, high frequency whirring sound. The two aliens jumped, clearly shocked by their discovery.

They were fiddling with the Doctor's screwdriver. Of course they were, why wouldn't they be? She groaned inwardly, and realized she needed a distraction. Chewing the inside of her lip nervously, she palmed the bolt in her hand, sizing up her options. There was a big computer display on the far side of the room, with a control panel underneath. It could be enough to allow her to escape, it could be enough to draw their attention to her and get her locked up again. Only one way to find out. She took a breath, and threw the bolt as hard as she could with the limited range of motion she had. There was a large shattering noise.

The power flickered off.

The aliens dropped what they were doing and ran to the computer to see what was wrong. Rose didn't hesitate, and dropped down into the lab. She agonizingly bounced off a table before hitting the ground, but she was still in one piece, which was more than she expected.

"What's happened?" one hollered, his voice low and grating. Apparently the Tardis was still in one piece, if it was still translating.

"Something's cracked through the main control panel!" the other exclaimed, hitting a bunch of buttons in vain. They didn't even notice that Rose was with them in the dark, and had snatched the screwdriver off the counter, and sprinted off towards the door. Power outages? No problem for the sonic. She pointed it in the direction of the electronic lock, and the door swung open. She slipped out and took off down the hall, with absolutely no clue where she was going. But she could hear the confused thud of footsteps coming from multiple directions. This was a good enough distraction initially, but now it was a liability. Oh well, no going back now.

A door. Doors were good. She could barely find the door handle in the dark. No lock. Even better. She emerged in the factory. Which was a good and bad thing. Good, because she could get back to the hall that contained the Doctor, bad because she had no clue where she was in the pitch blackness, and all around her were voices and footsteps and chaos. She was going to be caught if she didn't stay out of sight. Not that they could see anything in the dark, but they could figure out how to get the power back on any second.

She felt her way along the wall, staying planted as firmly against it as she could as the large beings clamored around the room, aimless, looking for a solution. Her vision slowly started to adjust, and she passed a large bin of guns.

_No_, Rose thought, _no guns. The Doctor would kill you if you even thought of it. _

She started to figure out where she was. The door she needed was across the vast room. Perfect. She gathered her courage, took a breath, and sprinted straight towards it. An alien suddenly came on a collision course is, dropped to the ground and rolled out of the way. Doing such nearly got her trampled on by another alien, who looked down to see her there. She leapt to her feet and took off again before he could grab her.

Rose was ten feet away from the door on the other side. She was panting heavily. Five feet, two feet.

She suddenly was not touching the ground, a sickening pulling feeling yanking her away from her destination. Everything suddenly seemed brighter. The lights had come back on. An alien was holding her by the collar as if she were a rag doll.

Before he had set her back on the ground and let two guards collect her, she had stashed the screwdriver in her cleavage. Safest place it could be, in her opinion.

"You're a fat lot of trouble then, aren't ya?" one guard said, his voice containing a sickening amusement to it. He seemed to like being in control.

"Well I…needed a good run. Exercise is important, ya know," Rose feigned a laugh, but it caught in her throat. She had no idea how she was going to get out of this one.

"Well, since you seemed to be so unpleased with the room we provided for you, we'll just have to find you some more…stimulating accomidations, eh?"

She didn't like the way the guard smiled through his helmet, his breath was enough to make her gag, his teeth were riddled with gunk and rot. The other guard stood there stoically, not making eye contact, not even moving. She started to rethink her 'not cruel' assessment of these creatures. She didn't want to be personally proven wrong. It was too late, though, there was nothing she could do. Rose had to simply accept her fate as she was dragged away towards a different door into a different hallway. She had the screwdriver, at least, hopefully it could help her out of this.

She was led to a long, open hallway. This one looked newer, like an addition onto the old building. The walls were a crisp, stark white. It was well lit, making the orange creatures practically glow like big, neon carrots. It showed off how truly dingy and old their armor was, as if they'd had it their whole lives, even had it passed down from previous generations. Everything here, evidently, was old and salvaged. Except for this one hallway. Why was that?

There were no doors to the sides down the long hall. Just one, solitary black door at the very end of the very long hall, it kept growing bigger as she was dragged closer to it. No, she definitely wasn't seeing too many exit signs in this situation.

When the door swung open, the very first thing she saw, was a big blue box. And a man standing in front of it, holding a sledgehammer.


End file.
